The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may or may not constitute prior art.
Typical manufacturing or assembly systems include conveying systems for transporting assemblies such as engines or transmissions between numerous workstations that perform various operations on the assemblies. The conveying systems include assembly pallets which carry assemblies from one workstation to the next. Previous assembly practices created a single engine or transmission design which was assembled on a dedicated assembly line. As vehicle engineering and manufacturing systems became more complex, engineers created a family of engine or transmission designs which included a similar basic architecture while having slight variations in, for example, packaging requirements. However, because of the limited flexibility of the assembly lines, different models within the family are required to have common features that were used by the assembly system to process the assembly. This forces the design for the assembly system to compensate for the assembly process when designing an engine or transmission, which in turn can lead to compromises in the effectiveness and efficiency of the engine or transmission.
One solution is to create a unique assembly pallet for each model of the design family. While this allows the design of the assembly to focus on factors other than the assembly process, the unique assembly pallets created a large additional cost that can add to the overall cost of the product.
While these improvements in assembly efficiency have proven meaningful, there is a constant desire to reduce the cost and complexity of the assembly system. Accordingly, there is room in the art for an improved assembly fixture adapter system having a universal assembly pallet and an adaptable assembly fixture.